Hair styling accessories, such as head band or scrunchy, are commonly used by most ladies and girls for hair styling purposes. The head band is an arc-shape band body worn on the forehead for pulling and holding the user's bang backwards. The scrunchy is for tightening the hair into a bundle so that the hair would not get in the way of normal human activity.
Ladies spend much money on purchasing various hair styling accessories. Especially young girls today, hair styling accessory such as head band or scrunchy not only has its functional purpose, but also is a fashion statement. That is the reason why almost all girls have at least 5 different design of hair bands or scrunchys waiting for them to wear, but yet still continue buying new style or latest design.
The conventional head band 10, as shown in FIG. 1A, has a common great shortcoming that it has a sewing line 11 provided thereon. However, what kinds of problems may such sewing line 11 create?
First, the conventional head band 10 comprises a fabric coating 12 entirely wrapping up a C-shape plastic made tubular band body 13. In order to produce the tubular fabric coating 12 to wrap up the band body 13, two longitudinal sides of a rectangular piece of fabric are sewing together to form the tubular fabric coating 12 which is inside out to hide the excessive leftover edges 111. Accordingly, the sewing line 11 is formed, which is protruded along an inner side 14 of the head band 10 due to the gathering of the leftover edges 111, as shown in FIG. 1A.
When the head band 10 is worn on a user's head, the presence of this protruding portion near the sewing line 11 of the head band 10 would substantially reduce the contact area of the inner side 14 of the head band 10 with the user's hair. The main purpose of the head band 10 is to hold the hair backwardly in position so that the user can do their work without the hair getting in the way. The head band 10 can hold the hair in place due to the following two principals: First, the friction between the hair and the surface contact area of the head band 10 can provide a grabbing ability. Second, the elastic nature of the head band 10 enables the head band 10 be clipping on to the user's head.
As mentioned above, the protruding sewing line 11 formed on the inner side of the conventional head band 10 may reduce the contact surface area with the hair, that mean the friction therebetween also decreased. In order to make sure the head band 10 can firmly hold on the user's head to serve its purpose, most manufacturers would increase the elastic modules of the head band 10 so as to compensate the reducing of contact area and the decreasing of friction between the hair and the inner side 14 of the head band 10. When the elastic modules of the head band 10 is increased, more pressure would be applied on the user's head that may make the user feel very uncomfortable.
Moreover, the manufacturing process of the conventional head band 10 is quite complicated. First, a rectangular piece fabric material must be cut to required dimension and size. Second, two longitudinal sides of the fabric material are sewed together to form a tubular form fabric coating 12. Third, one end of the tubular fabric coating 12 is further sewed up. Fourth, make the fabric coating 12 inside out to hide the leftover edges 111. Fifth, insert the arc-shape band body 13 into the fabric coating 12 until it is entirely wrapped up by the fabric coating 12. Sixth, sew up the other end of the fabric coating 12.
The manufacturing process as mentioned above is very troublesome because most of the steps rely on manual work, that is time consuming and may unreasonably increase the manufacturing cost of the conventional head band 10.
Most of the users still highly refuse the presence of the sewing line 11, as shown in FIG. 1B, therefore some manufacturers further try to cover up the sewing line 11 on the inner side 14 with an additional cover strip 16. The additional cover strip 16 is generally sewed along the inner side 14 of the head band 10 to cover the sewing line 11 before inserting the band body 13. However, this cover strip 16 may made the head band 10 even more uncomfortable to wear because the head band 10 becomes more thicker. Besides, the cost and the complication of the production of the head band 10 would also increase.
The sewing line 11 also brings another frequently happened dilemma that, sometime the users may use the head band 10 and a hair clipper at same time to hold their hair in place. An end of the hair clipper might catch in the sewing line 11. Once the sewing line 11 is broken, the sewing line 11 tends to fall apart and the head band 10 be comes useless.
Other method of keeping the fabric coating on the tubular band body including usage of glue between a contact area of the fabric coating and the tubular band body. But after the head band 10 is been use for a while or the temperature change can all cause the glue to lose its strength, thus result in failure of the head band 10.